National Guard Difficulty ‘Places the Nation at Risk’

Posted on Feb 1, 2008

A commission set up by Congress in 2005 to examine the readiness of National Guard and reserve units has found that they’re simply inadequate to the task of dealing with a major disaster in the United States. The commission blamed the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, but also the Pentagon’s assumption that training for those conflicts would somehow prepare troops for disaster relief at home.

Los Angeles Times:

Reserve units have been taxed by repeated deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan, but the commission said the inadequacies were not solely the result of the wars. Overall, it said, the Pentagon has failed to provide adequate funding, on the “flawed assumption” that current training for military operations overseas would suffice for domestic duties as well.

The commission was set up by Congress in 2005 to examine the needs of the Guard and reserves amid their heavy deployment to war zones. The panel sounded a special alarm over what it said was the Guard’s insufficient training—due to inadequate funding—for a chemical, biological or nuclear strike.